“As luck would have it,” Juan Diego may have heard his former student say to Bienvenido. Clark said this in response to Bienvenido’s telling him that the nearest Catholic hospital to the Guadalupe church was in San Juan City; part of metropolitan Manila, San Juan was the town next to Makati, only twenty minutes away. What Clark meant by “luck” was that this was the hospital where his wife worked — the Cardinal Santos Medical Center.
From Juan Diego’s point of view, the twenty-minute drive was dreamlike but a blur; nothing that was real registered with him. Not the Greenhills Shopping Center, which was fairly close to the hospital — not even the oddly named Wack Wack Golf & Country Club, adjacent to the medical center. Clark was worried about his dear former teacher, because Juan Diego didn’t respond to Clark’s comment about the spelling of Wack. “Surely one whacks a golf ball — there’s an h in whack, or there should be,” Clark said. “I’ve always thought golfers were wasting their time — it’s no surprise they can’t spell.”
But Juan Diego didn’t respond; Clark’s former teacher didn’t even react to the crucifixes in the emergency room at Cardinal Santos — this really worried Clark. Nor did Juan Diego seem to notice the nuns, making their regular rounds. (At Cardinal Santos, Clark knew, there was always a priest or two on hand in the mornings; they were giving Communion to those patients who wanted it.)
“Mister is going swimming!” Juan Diego imagined he heard Consuelo cry, but the little girl in pigtails was not among the upturned faces in the enveloping crowd. No Filipinos were watching, and Juan Diego wasn’t swimming; he was walking without a limp, at last. He was walking upside down, of course; he was skywalking, at eighty feet — he’d taken the first two of those death-daring steps. (And then another two, and then two more.) Once again, the past surrounded him — like those upturned faces in the watchful crowd.
Juan Diego imagined Dolores was there; she was saying, “When you skywalk for the virgins, they let you do it forever.” But skywalking wasn’t a big deal for a dump reader. Juan Diego had snatched the first books he read from the hellfires of the basurero; he’d burned his hands saving books from burning. What were sixteen steps at eighty feet for a dump reader? Wasn’t this the life he might have had, if he’d been brave enough to seize it? But you don’t see the future clearly when you’re only fourteen.
“We’re the miraculous ones,” Lupe had tried to tell him. “You have another future!” she’d correctly predicted. And, really, for how long could he have kept himself and his little sister alive — even if he’d become a skywalker?
There were just ten more steps, Juan Diego thought; he’d been silently counting the steps to himself. (Of course, no one in the emergency room at Cardinal Santos knew he was counting.)
The ER nurse knew she was losing him. She’d already called for a cardiologist; Clark had insisted that his wife be paged — naturally, he’d been texting her, too. “Dr. Quintana is coming, isn’t she?” the ER nurse asked Clark; in the nurse’s opinion, this didn’t matter, but she thought it was wise to keep Clark distracted.
“Yes, yes — she’s coming,” Clark muttered. He was texting Josefa again — it was something to do. It suddenly irritated him that the old nun who’d admitted them to the ER was still there, still hovering near them. And now the old nun crossed herself, her lips moving inaudibly. What was she doing? Clark wondered — was she praying? Even her praying irritated him.
“Perhaps a priest—” the old nun started to say, but Clark stopped her.
“No — no priest!” Clark told her. “Juan Diego wouldn’t want a priest.”
“No, indeed — he most definitely wouldn’t,” Clark heard someone say. It was a woman’s voice, very authoritative, a voice he’d heard before — but when, but where? Clark was wondering.
When Clark looked up from his cell phone, Juan Diego had silently counted two more steps — then two more, and then another two. (There were only four more steps to go! Juan Diego was thinking.)
Clark French saw no one with his former teacher in the emergency room — no one except the ER nurse and the old nun. The latter lady had moved away; she was now standing at a respectful distance from where Juan Diego lay fighting for his life. But two women — all in black, their heads completely covered — were passing in the hall, just gliding by, and Clark caught only a glimpse of them before they vanished. Clark didn’t really get a good look at them. He’d distinctly heard Miriam say, “No, indeed — he most definitely wouldn’t.” But Clark would never connect the voice he’d heard with that woman who’d stabbed the gecko with a salad fork at the Encantador.
In all probability — even if Clark French had gotten a good look at those women gliding by in the hall — he wouldn’t have said the two women in black resembled a mother and her daughter. The way the women’s heads were covered, and how they weren’t speaking to each other, made Clark French think the women were nuns — from an order whose all-black habits seemed standard to him. (As for Miriam and Dorothy, they’d just disappeared — in that way they had. Those two were always just appearing, or disappearing, weren’t they?)
“I’ll go find Josefa myself,” Clark said helplessly to the ER nurse. (Good riddance — you’re of no use here! she might have thought, if she thought anything.) “No priest!” Clark repeated, almost angrily, to the old nun. The nun said nothing; she’d seen dying of all kinds — she was familiar with the process, and with all sorts of desperate, last-minute behavior (such as Clark’s).
The ER nurse knew when a heart was finished; neither an OB-GYN nor a cardiologist would jump-start this one, the nurse knew, but — even so — she went looking for someone.
Juan Diego was looking like he’d lost count of something. Isn’t it only two more steps, or is it still four more? Juan Diego was thinking. He hesitated to take the next step. Skywalkers (real skywalkers) know better than to hesitate, but Juan Diego just stopped skywalking. That was when he knew he wasn’t really skywalking; that was when Juan Diego understood that he was just imagining.
It was what he was truly good at — just imagining. Juan Diego knew then that he was dying — the dying wasn’t imaginary. And he realized that this, exactly this, was what people did when they died; this was what people wanted when they passed away — well, it was what Juan Diego wanted, anyway. Not necessarily the life everlasting, not a so-called life after death, but the actual life he wished he’d had — the hero’s life he once imagined for himself.
So this is death — this is all death is, Juan Diego thought. It made him feel a little better about Lupe. Death was not even a surprise. “Ni siquiera una sorpresa,” the old nun heard Juan Diego say. (“Not even a surprise.”)
Now there was no chance to leave Lithuania. Now there was no light — there was only the unlit darkness. That was what Dorothy had called the view from the plane of Manila Bay, when you were approaching Manila at night: an unlit darkness. “Except for the occasional ship,” she’d told him. “The darkness is Manila Bay,” Dorothy had explained. Not this time, Juan Diego knew — not this darkness. There were no lights, no ships — this unlit darkness was not Manila Bay.